Excellent Chicago Tribune article about the almost-dead arcade biz.

[diskoboy]

It's truly sad that a staple of my childhood is on the brink of extinction.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/featur...,3830088.story

[scooby105]

Nice article. I always stop and play at Gameland when I'm in the Lake Geneva area. I guess I'll have to head up and play one last time this summer. I used to stop at the arcade on Belmont by the Red Line every once in a while as well. It's a shame to see them all go.

[Mianrtcv]

I really miss our local arcades. We had 2-3 very good ones and 2 so-so spots. All were popular. Now we have one that is a ticket machine joint. Skee ball flashing light kid type "games". It is hard to go in their. They have very few games anyone over 7 might try. Oddly enough I have enough plastic Harmonicas, i still have surplus tickets though...

[Policenaut]

Up until last December, I used to be a manager for a local Time Out Arcade, and every word written in the article denotes the saddening truth about the arcades. At first, everytime I go to the job was pleasant, you know, fixing games, giving prizes, organizing tourneys, all that stuff was truly ace, and I loved it. But, when you get to analize how bad was the arcade business not from a sales attendant view but as a manager view, you get to see how bad the arcade business is right now.

[murdoc rose]

T-T its so sad

[cityside75]

I'm sad to hear Gameland is closing. I've only been there once a couple years ago but I was so happy to see a place like that still existed.

This actually reminds me of a thread I wanted to start recently. We still have what I consider to be an above average arcade nearby - it's a brunswick zone with at least 2-3 dozen arcade games including Ms. Pac man, X-men (6-player!), a couple MK's, Street Fighters, Galaga, Simpsons, and a bunch more. They still dedicate the main floor to arcade games, with the ticket redemption games around the edges. My kids (5 & 7) love going there, but have little interest in the video games because they want to win tickets for the cruddy prizes. SO...

Why doesn't somebody figure out a way to retrofit ticket dispensers to the video games? It would be great if there was a way that the tickets could be adjusted based on score, but even if they spit out a set number just for playing (which some of the other ticket based games seem to do anyway) it seems to me it would help improve the take on the video games. For one thing, parents like me could actually help the kids in their quest for another spider ring, and the kids would actually venture into the video game area, which is usually a lot less crowded than the ticket game area.

I'm surprised nobody's tried this yet, or have they?

[retro junkie]

When I first started going to the arcades, all they had were pinball machines. I can still remember the day they got a "Pong" machine, then space invaders, Pacman, etc. I have lived through a lot of them and I stayed faithful for a long time. I, to this day, will walk into one, whenever I find one, just to feel the atmosphere around me. (goosebumps) There is no longer any local arcade in my area, hasn't been one for a very long time. I have to drive to the next town just to find one. I really miss the old thrills and it is very sad that they are dying completely. Mannnnn, miss those sit down driving games, Stun runner, Starblade, etc. That meeting place of new friendships, the challenges, "who beat my high score!" The arcade, in the past, was such a big part of gaming. One just had to be there to know the experience.

Here's two blinks of a cold steel ball and a few electronic bleeps to a golden age of gaming that is closing its doors.

[guitargary75]

Thanks for posting the article.

[otaku]

sucks. You still can't beat going to the arcade. My favorite place to hang out still

[calthaer]

Arcades were too slow to evolve and change. There are innovations that they could have tried to revive business, but I've heard of such things only in Japan: things like being able to bring your home system memory card and unlock characters from the home version of the game. Some sort of universal player keycard that could interface with home systems / machines, the idea that an arcade could be a "clearinghouse" for competitive gaming...they never really embraced the Internet age. Why aren't arcade machines hooked up to the 'net to play against people in OTHER arcades, live, using low-latency connections - maybe even a game-specific protocol that doesn't rely on the TCP/IP backbone of the rest of the internet?

Anyways...yeah, it's a shame that they're dying, but on the same note, I don't see them doing too much to survive. That's more in the hands of arcade-game makers, though - the poor guys at the bottom of the totem pole (the store-owners) just have to take what they've been given.

[BydoEmpire]

That was a sad article to read. I used to go to Dennis' every time I got off at the Belmot El stop - I had no idea it had closed down (I moved out of Chicago years ago). I wish I knew about some of the other Chicago-area classic arcades when I lived there, because I definitely would have gone. There's nothing like that around here (Orlando) that I know of. DisneyQuest used to have a room full of classic games, but I haven't been there in 8 years. Fun Spot might. I wish these places would advertise exactly what games they offer on their web sites, so I'd know if it's worth making the trip.

[Aussie2B]

Excellent article, but talk about pulling on the heartstrings. It's not surprising that arcades that only offer classics are struggling, though. I don't mind seeing some modern games and ticket redemption machines as long as they mix in a decent amount of the older stuff. There's a pretty good arcade still in my hometown's mall. It actually seems surprisingly active with DDR and such pulling in small crowds. I think they're doing it right because they offer a nice variety of everything from the classics of the 80s, to the beat-em-ups, shooters, and fighters of the 90s, to the dancing, racing and light gun games of recent years.

[Graham Mitchell]

That was a sad article to read. I used to go to Dennis' every time I got off at the Belmot El stop - I had no idea it had closed down (I moved out of Chicago years ago).

Me too! I lived there until last year. Dennis's was pretty scarry, though. There was some shady characters in there, definitely. And their Ms. Pac-Man cocktail was busted to hell.

Nickel City is a place I went to a lot, though. Northbrook was halfway between my house in Evanston and my med school in North Chicago. And the article is wrong about one thing...EVERYBODY plays the free games. They're awesome there, and they work. For the most part, that is. Some of the monitors have a lot of burn in, (particularly Rastan) but all the buttons and sticks work.

Diversions was another place that was pretty close to my house. It was just off some main drag...can't remember the location. It was okay, though. When I finished 2nd year of medical school I spent 5 hours there playing centipede and Strider, celebrating.